A glow of childlike joy suffused the satyr’s face. Conan waited for the glow to fade, then said: “Now that we’ve saved some of your folk from the wizard’s cauldron, we may ask help from you. How can I reach you?”
Gola showed Conan a smaU tube made of bone that was suspended from a vine entwined about his neck. “Go in woods and blow.” The satyr put the whistle to his Ups and puffed his cheeks.
“I hear no sound,” said Conan.
“Nay, but satyr hear. You take.”
Conan stared at the tiny whistle as it lay in his huge pahn, while the others frowned, thinking the bit of bone a useless toy intended to cozen their general. Presently, Conan sHpped the whistle into his pouch, saying gravely: “I thank you, little friend.” Then calling his squires and the nearest sentry, he said: “Escort Gola into the woods beyond the camp. Let none molest him—some of our superstitious soldiers might deem him an embodied evil spirit and take a cut at him. Farewell.”
When the satyr had departed, Conan addressed
CONAN THE LIBERATOR
his comrades: “Numitor lies beyond the Notch, waiting for us to climb the slope ere he signals attack! What make you of it?^
Prospero shrugged. “Meseems he relies much on that 'big magician’—the king’s sorcerer, I have no doubt/’
Trocero shook his head. “More likely, he’s fain to give us a clear path to the top, so that we can face him on equal terms. He is a weU-meaning gentleman who thinks to fight a war by rules of chivalry.”
“He must know we outnumber him/’ said Pubhus, perplexed.
“Aye,” retorted Trocero, "but his troops are Aquilonia’s best, whereas half our motley horde are babes playing at warfare. So he reHes on dash and discipline… .”
The argument was long and inconclusive. As twilight deepened into night, Conan banged his goblet on the table. “We cannot sit below the cliffs for ay, attempting to read Numitor’s mind. Tomorrow we shall scale the Giant’s Notch, prepared for instant action.”
lATYRf BLOOD
Prince Numitor paced restlessly about the royalist camp. The cooking fires were dying down, and the regiments of Royal Frontiersmen had turned in for the night The new moon set, and in the gathering darkness the stars wheeled slowly westward like diamonds stitched upon the night-blue cloak of a dancing girl. To the west, where twilight lingered, the dodging shape of a foraging bat besmudged the horizon, while overhead the clap of a nightjar’s wings shattered the silence.
The prince passed the line of sentries and strolled toward the edge of the escarpment, where Thulandra Thuu had placed things needful for his magic. Behind him the camp vanished into forest-shadowed darkness. Ahead the precipice fell sharply away. And leftward yawned the black canyon that was called the Giant’s Notch.
Although the prince’s placid ears picked up no sound of movement in the gorge, something about the camp’s location disturbed him; but for a time he could not put a finger on the source of his unease.
After walking several bowshots’ distance, Prince Numitor sighted the dancing flames of a small fire. He hastened toward it. Thulandra Thuu, hooded and cloaked in black, like some bird of ill omen, was bend-
CONAN THE LIBERATOR
ing over the fire, while Hsiao, on his knees, fed the blaze with twigs. A metal tripod, from the apex of which a small brazen pot was suspended by a chain, straddled the fickle fire. To one side a large copper caldron squatted in the grass.
As Numitor approached, the sorcerer moved away from the firelight and, fumbHng in a leathern wallet, extracted a crystal phial. This he unstoppered, muttering an incantation in an unknown tongue, and poured the contents into the heated vessel. A sudden hissing and a plume of smoke, shot through with rainbow hues, issued from the pot.
Thulandra Thuu glanced at the prince, said a brief “Good even, my lordl" and reached again into his wallet.
“Master Thulandra!" said Numitor.
“Sir?" The sorcerer paused in his searching.
“You insisted that the camp be set far from the precipice; I wonder at your reasoning. Should the rebels steal into the Giant's Notch, they would be upon us ere they were discovered. Why not move the camp here on the morrow, where our men can readily assail the foe with missiles from above?"
The eyes beneath the sorcerer’s cowl were veiled in purple darkness, but the prince fancied that they glowed deep in that cavernous hollow, hke the night eyes of beasts of prey. Thulandra purred: “My lord Prince, if the demons I unleash perform their proper function, my spell would put your men in danger should they stand where we stand now. The final stage I shall commence at midnight, a scant three ^ hours hence. Hsiao will inform you in good time."
The magician shook more powder into the steaming pot and stirred the molten mixture with a slender silver rod. “Now I crave your pardon, good my lord, but I must ask you to stand back whilst I construct my pentacle."
SATYRS BLOOD
Hsiao handed Thulandra Thuu the wooden staff, ornately carved, which served him as a walking stick when he stalked about the camp. While his servant piled fresh fuel upon the dying fire, the sorcerer paced off certain distances about the conflagration and marked the bare earth with the ferule of his staff. Muttering, he drew a circle, a dozen paces in diameter, then etched deep lines back and forth across the space enclosed. Following an arcane ritual, he inscribed a symbol in each angle of the pentacle. The prince imderstood neither the diagram nor the lettering thereon, but felt no desire to plumb the wizard’s unholy mysteries.
Now Thulandra rose up and stood beside his fire, his back to the precipice. He intoned an utterance—a prayer or incantation—in a singsong foreign tongue. Then facing east, he repeated his invocation, and in this wise completed one rotation. Numitor saw the stars grow dim and shapeless shadows flutter through the clear night air. He heard the sinister thunder of unseen beating wings. Thinking it better not to view more of the uncanny preparations of his cousin’s favorite, he stumbled back to camp. To his captains he gave orders to rouse the men an hour before midnight to comply with the sorcerer’s directions. Then he turned in.
Three hours later Hsiao spoke to a sentry, who sent another to awaken the sleeping prince. As Numitor made his way to the cliff whereon the wizard prepared his magical spell, he came upon the column of soldiers ordered by Thulandra Thuu. Each man-at-arms gripped a bound and captive satyr. A dozen of the furry forest folk whimpered and wailed as their captors brutally hustled them into line.
Hsiao had built up the fire, and the brazen pot bubbled merrily, sending a cloud of varicolored smoke into the starlit sky. Upon Thulandra’s curt command,
CONAN THE LIBERATOR
the first soldier in the line dragged his squirming captive to the copper cauldron standing upon the grass and forced the bleating creature’s head down over the vesseFs rim. As the darkness throbbed to the beat of an inaudible drum—or was it the beat of the awestruck soldiers’ hearts?—the sorcerer deftly slashed the satyr’s throat. At a signal, the man-at-arms lifted the sacrificial victim by its ankles and drained its blood into the large container. Then, in obedience to a low command, he tossed the small cadaver over the precipice.
A pause ensued while Thulandra added more powders to his sinister brew and pronounced another incantation. At length he beckoned to the next man in line, who dragged his satyr forward to be slain. The other soldiers shifted uneasy feet One muttered:
‘This takes longer than a coronationi Would he’d get on with it and let us back to bed.”
The eastern sky was paling when the last satyr died. The fire beneath the brazen pot had burned to a bed of embers. Hsiao, at his master’s command, unhooked the steaming pot and poiured its boiling contents into the blood-filled cauldron. The nearest i soldiers saw—or thought they saw—ghosdy forms fise ! from the latter vessel; but otliers perceived only great J clouds of vapor. In the deceptive predawn half-Hght, i none could be siure of what he saw.
Faintly in the distance those on the cliff-top heard the sound of
men in motion. Among the marching men no word was spoken, but the jingle of harness and the j tramp of many feet cried defiance to the silent mom- j ing air. |
Thulandra Thuu raised a voice shrill with tension:’ i “My lordl Prince Numitorl Order your men away I” I
Startled out of his sleepy lethargy, the prince barked the command: “Stand to arms I Back to camp!”
The sounds of an approaching army grew. The sorcerer raised his arms and droned an invocation.
SATYRS BLOOD
Hsiao handed him a dipper, with which he scooped up hquid from the cauldron and poured the fluid into a deep crack in the rocks. He stepped back, raised imploring arms against the lightening sky, and cried out again in unknown tongues. Then he ladled out another dipperful, and another.
Along the road from Culario, before that sandy ribbon disappeared beneath a canopy of leaves, the mage could see a pair of mounted men. They trotted toward the Giant’s Notch, and as they went, they studied the rock wall and the woods below it. Then a whole tioop of cavalry came into view; and following them, files of infantry, swinging along with weapons balanced on their shoulders.
Thulandra Thuu hastily ladled out more liquid from the cauldron and once more raised his skirmy arms to heaven.
Leading the first rank of rebel horse, Conan rose in his stirrups to peer about. His scouts had seen no royaUsts in the greenery along the forest road, or at the Giant’s Notch, or atop the towering cliffs. The Cimmerian’s eagle glance raked the summit, now tipped a rosy pink by the slanting rays of the morning sun. Conan’s apprehension of hidden traps stirred in his savage soul. Prince Numitor was no genius, this he knew; but even such a one as he would make ready to defend the Notch.
Yet he saw no sign of a royalist mustering. Would Numitor, indeed, allow the rebels to reach the Imirian Plateau to lessen the odds against them? Conan knew the nobles of this land professed obedience to the rules of chivalry; but in all his years of war, no general had ever risked a certain chance of victory for such an abstract principle. Nay, the enemy had the upper hand; a tiap was obvious! Experience with the hypocrisies of civilized men made the Cimmerian cynical about the ideals they so eloquently proclaimed.
CONAN THE LIBERATOR
The barbarians among whom he had grown to manhood were quite as treacherous; but they did not seek to gild their bloody actions with noble sentiments.
One scout reported a strange discovery. At the base of the escarpment, leftward of the Giant’s Notch, he had come upon a heap of satyr corpses, each with its throat ripped open. The bodies, smashed and scattered, had fallen from the heights above.
“Scorcery afootl" muttered Trocero. “The king’s he-witch has joined with Numitor, 111 wager.”
As the two lead horsemen neared the Notch, they spurred their steeds and vanished up the road that paralleled the turgid River Bitaxa. Soon they reappeared upon a rocky ledge and signaled all was quiet. Conan scanned the summit once again. He thought he caught a hint of movement—a mere black speck that might have been a trick of Hght or of tired eyes. Turning, he motioned the leader of the troop. Captain Morenus, to enter the tunnel of the Notch.
Conan sat his mount beside the road, watching intently. As the horsemen trotted past, his heart swelled at the soldierly appearance they made, thanks to the driving force of his incessant drilling. His own horse, a bay gelding, seemed restless, stamping its hooves and dancing sideways. Conan stroked the creature’s neck to gentle it, but the bay continued to fidget. He first thought the animal was impatient to move forward with the others of the troop; but as the horse became more agitated, a premonition took shape in Conan’s mind.
After another glance at the escarpment Conan, a scowl on his scarred face, swung oflF his beast and dropped with a clash of armor to the ground. Gripping his reins, he shut his eyes. His barbarian senses, keener than those of city-bred men, had not deceived him. Through the soles of his boots he felt a faint quivering in the earth. Not the vibration that a group
SATYRS BLOOD
of galloping horsemen sends through the ground, this was something slower, more deliberate, with more actual motion, as if the earth had waked to yawn and stretch.
Conan hesitated no longer. Cupping his hands around his mouth and filling his great lungs, he bellowed: “Morenus, come backl Get out of the Notchl Spur your horses, alll Come backl”
There was a moment of confusion in the Notch, as the command was passed along and the soldiers sought to turn their steeds on the narrow way. Above them on the chff, the sorcerer shrieked a final invocation and struck the rocks outside his pentacle with his curiously carven stafiF.
A rumble—a deep-toned roll that scarcely could be heard—issued from the earth. Above the retreating cavalrymen, the cliffs swayed. Pieces of black basalt detached themselves and toppled, with deceptive slowness, then faster and faster, striking ledges, shattering, and bounding off to crash into the gorge. From the river Bitaxa, towering jets of spray foimtained aloft to dwarf the downward fall of the cascade.
Conan found his stirrup with some diBBculty, as his terror-stricken beast danced around him in a circle. His foot secured, he swung cursing into the saddle and wheeled to face the column of infantry, still marching briskly toward the Notch.
“Get backl Get back!” he roared, but his words were lost in the grumbling, grinding thunder of the earthquake. He moved his horse into the colimm’s path, making frantic gestures. The lead men understood and checked their gait; but those behind continued to press forward, so that the column bunched up into a milling mass.
Within the Notch the cliffs swayed, reeled, and crumbled. With the roar of an angry god, millions of tons of rock cascaded into the gap. The earth beneath
CONAN THE LIBERATOR
the soldiers’ feet so swayed and bounced that men clutched one another to stay erect; a few fell, their weapons clattering to the rocky ground.
Down from the deadly flume raced Conan’s troop of cavalry, lashed by their panic. The leaders crashed into the infantry column, downing some horses, spilling riders from their saddles, and injuring many foot soldiers caught in the pincer s jaws. Men’s shouts and horses' screams soared above the thunder of the quake.
The Bitaxa River foamed out of its bed, as waves sent downstream by the fall of rock spread out on the flatlands below and lapped across the road. Soldiers splashed ankle-deep in water and prayed to their assorted gods.
Controlling his frantic mount by a savage grip on the reins, Conan sought to restore order. “Morenus!” he shouted. “Did all your men get out?”
“All but a dozen or so in the van. General.”
Glowering at the Giant’s Notch, Conan cursed the loss. A vast cloud of dust obsciu-ed the pass, until a wind sprang up and swept it out. As the dust thinned, Conan saw that the Notch was now much wider than before and that its slopes were less than vertical. The flume was filled with a huge talus of broken rock— stones of all sizes, from pebbles to fragments as large as a tent. From time to time small slides continued to issue from the sloping walls and clatter down upon the talus. Any man caught beneath that fall of rock would be entombed forever.
One section to the left side of the cliff had curiously remained in place; it now rose from the slope like a narrow buttress. At the pinnacle of this strange formation, Conan saw a pair of small figures, black-robed and cowled. One tossed its arms on high, as if in supplication.
“That’s the king’s sorcerer, Thulandra Thuu, or I’m a Stygianl” rasped a voice nearby.
SATYRS BLOOD
Conan turned to see Gromel at his elbow. "Think you he sent the earthquake?”
“Aye. And if he'd waited till we were all within the Notch, we’d all be dead. He’s too far for a bowshot; but if I had a bow, Fd chance it.”
An archer heard and handed up his bow, saying: iry mine, su:I
Gromel dismounted, drew an arrow to the head, shifted aim by a hair’s breadth, and let fly. The arrow arcked high and struck the cliff a score of paces below the top. T
he small figures vanished.
“A good try,” grunted Conan. “We should have set up a ballista. Gromel, there are broken bones in need of splints; see that the physicians do their work,”
Under lowering brows Conan stared at the talus. His barbarian instincts told him to rally his men, dismount the cavalry, and lead them aU in a headlong charge up the steep incline, leaping from rock to rock with naked steel in hand. But experience warned him that this would be a futile gesture, throwing away men s lives to no good purpose. Progress would be slow and laborious; the struggling climbers would be raked by arrows from above; those who survived the chmb would be too winded to do battle.
He looked around. '‘Ho there, Trocerol Prosperol Morenus, send a trooper to teU Publius and PaUantides that I want them here. Now, friends, what next?”
Count Trocero reined his horse closer to Conan’s and studied the mass of broken rock. “The army can in no way ascend the slope. Men afoot might slowly pick their way up—if Numitor did not assail them and the sorcerer cast no other deadly spelL But horses never, nor yet the wains."
“Could we build our own road, replacing the rock-ledge path that lies beneath the rocks?” suggested Prospero.
Trocero considered the idea. “With a thousand
workmen, several months, and gold to spare, I’d build you as fine a road as you could wish.”
“We do not have such time, nor money either,' rumbled Conan. “If we cannot go through the Notch, we must go over, under, or around it. Order the men to march a quarter-league back along the road and pitch camp under the forest trees.”
In the royalist camp Thulandra Thuu confronted a furious prince. The exhausted sorcerer, looking much older than was his wont, leaned on Hsiao’s sturdy shoulder. The area on which his pentacle was marked had not fallen with the balance of the cUff, and he had walked the narrow bridge to safety.
Conan the Liberator Page 15